C’mon C’mon

Spoiler alert. This is going to be an official love declaration to Joaquin Phoenix.

For those who know me, you must have heard my story of the screening of “Joker” at the Venice Film Festival a hundred times. I am going to repeat it once again. Because this is and always will be one of the strongest moments cinema gave to me.

First the context. One of the good things of a festival is that, unless you do your little research on the net, you know almost nothing about what you are going to watch. What you have available is the name of the Director, the main cast, the name of the movie and a 2 sentences short summary of the plot (that usually leaves you with more questions than answers).

Second thing is that, in Venice, in a non-COVID context, you usually have the opportunity to get an “abonamento” that allows you to see most of the official selection in 10 days (at a quite democratic price). Meaning that for 10 days, your evenings are rhythmed by two screenings in a row starting from around 8pm until whenever the second movie ends. When the second movie happens to be a 3-4 hours long one (which occurred a few times), it can be a long evening.

“Joker” was the second movie screened during one of our September 2019 festival evenings. Now, from my earlier posts you might have understood that I am not a Batman (or any kind of superhero) girl. You might thus guess that I was more than suspicious about what I was going to see on the screen (by my own festival principles, I had not done any research on the topic). The presence of Joaquin Phoenix in the cast raised some doubts, though – in my Cartesian head, it did not fit with at all this “Batman shit”. I could therefore describe my state of mind as extremely doubtful and confused.

The funny part of the story says that, after 15 minutes of normal screening, the sound system went down in the movie hall (a huge temporary construction, built just for the festival). For an additional 15 minutes, the audience contemplated the screen whilst dialogues were almost inaudible. At first, everyone was convinced this was a part of the movie effects. That Arthur’s unsettled nature showed in the weird sounds that were coming out of the screen. Until someone finally concluded that, something was obviously wrong. The entire movie hall started shouting and clapping. The screening stopped, the lights turned on. 

By that time, it must have been around 11:30pm or midnight. On a usual festival evening, such an event would have meant that half of the hall would get up and leave the screening – keeping the energy up for the next days. In this specific case, at least 95% of it remained seated. Because, by that time, after 15 minutes of screening with sound, and 15 minutes of screening without, everyone had already understood that what we were looking at was an absolute masterpiece. My eyes were wide opened, and the only thing I could say was “oh my god”.

It took about another 20 minutes to get the festival crew to fix the technical issues. During this time everyone kept on waiting, absolutely determined to see the rest of the movie from which we had only gotten a sneak peak. The screening finally restarted, almost from the beginning. Except for one Italian guy, shouting angrily “but we have already seen this!”, no one seemed to mind re watching. 

The rest is history, the 9 minutes of standing ovation in the Sala Grande, the Golden Lion, and the Oscar. And me who kept on repeating “oh my god” for at least two additional days. 

Before seeing “Joker”, I was already convinced Joaquin Phoenix was one of the best actors of his generation. After that day, the only conclusion I could come up with was that he was at least very close to Daniel Day Lewis’ genius (which on my personal ladder is the equivalent of the Holy Grail). He had officially entered my very selective “Cinema Pantheon”.

This explains why, when “C’mon C’mon” started screening in Brussels on Wednesday, I immediately disregarded all my “support small cinemas” principles, grabbed my movie-buddie Evghenia, and run to the UGC.

You know that situation when you already love the movie before you have even seen it? That was exactly the state of mind I was in yesterday. My smile was broad, waiting for it to start. All my movie chakras were opened and fully receptive. Maybe this is exactly why I went through an anti-climax (the exact anti-thesis of my “Joker” experience).

As it is often the case, too much expectation ends up killing the excitement.

Do not take me wrong. Joaquin was beyond perfect as usual. As solar as he was dark in “Joker”. I do not think I have ever seen him as radiant as this – troubled only in an average human way, generally well balanced, loving and kind. The chemistry he has with that kid is something coming from outer space. There is nothing artificial or sounding false about it. God knows I have a very performant radar for cheesy adult/kids story. My degree of tolerance is usually close to zero for those.

So yes, I really loved all the family-related part of the picture – the love between the brother and the sister (shaken only by life circumstances), the mom’s infinite tolerance for her son’s more than strong and original personality, the way Joaquin puts words on the challenges that he is facing while interacting with this tough little human. It feels so true. So real that it is hard to believe that, in the end, all this comes down to outstanding acting performances.

My frustration came from the fact that I did not get enough of the above. Long shots of black and white American cities and highways disturbed my pleasure – quite aesthetic indeed; but why do I have to watch those when they are taking my mind away from theses beautifully human scenes I have just witnessed? Even the interviews with American teenagers, illustrating Phoenix’s job in the movie, triggered impatience and frustration in me.

I kept on thinking that it was so close to being the movie I was hoping to see. That without all these unnecessary ornaments it would have been so much more.

Beware that my current state of mind might have something to do with my mixed feelings about what I saw. My movie-buddy, who is usually way less tolerant than me to slowness and aesthetics, did not have the same reservations as mine. She loved it. As a majority of journalists/film experts did.  I can only say that the moments offered by Joaquin Phoenix, Gaby Hoffman and Woody Norman are worth a million. For the rest, I leave you to judge (and maybe let me know 😉 )